“I am your servant forevermore,” he says, heedless, pressing his dry lips to the back of my hand. His dark brown hair falls forward in a curtain, brushing my arm like silk. “Obedient to your command.”

  I shake my head, but the vow is made. And I’m too tired to even be able to explain why that worries me. My mind feels too adrift.

  I look up at the three prisoners I freed and am suddenly, acutely aware of how much trouble I made. I didn’t realize how much I have changed from that terrified girl, forever looking for a place to hide in the Court of Teeth. Breaking spells on mortals has made me rebellious.

  And for a moment, I am viciously glad. It doesn’t feel good exactly, to be in danger, but it does feel good to be the cause of events rather than being swept along into them.

  “Take off your shoes,” I tell the girl, my voice rasping worse than ever.

  She looks down at her sneakers. “What for?”

  I give her a commanding look, and she toes them off.

  I push myself up, trying to remember my half a plan. Hyacinthe grabs my arm as I sway, and my pride urges me to snap at him, but I am too grateful.

  “So that your steps will be quiet,” I explain. “You three can fit behind the water trough. It’s dark, and if you crouch down, you won’t be seen.”

  Hyacinthe pauses. “And you?”

  I shake my head. “I said I wasn’t coming. I’ll keep the guards busy. Can you find your way out from here?”

  He nods, briefly. He’s a soldier, hopefully trained for situations not totally unlike this. Then he frowns. “If you stay behind, you will be in great danger,” he tells me.

  “I’m not going,” I say.

  “He won’t forgive you for this.”

  If Oak discovers what I’ve done, Hyacinthe is probably right. But I still have to face Lady Nore or she will hunt me down. Nothing about this changes that.

  “You swore to me,” I remind him, although his words echo my fears. “Moments ago. What I ask is for you to get yourself and Gwen out of the Court of Moths alive. And get the merrow to the sea cave. It’s on the way.”

  “Send me north, to Lady Nore, then,” Hyacinthe tells me, almost whispering. “Should you make it there, at least you’ll have an ally.”

  “And that is why you ought not dramatically vow to obey someone,” I say, a growl in my voice. “They seldom ask for what you hope they will.”

  “I know about faeries and bargains,” Gwen says to me, foolishly. “You’re going to ask something from me, too, right?”

  I look her over. I hadn’t planned on asking for anything, but that was unwise. She probably has little on her, but her clothes and sneakers would allow me to pass into the mortal world more easily, if I had to do so. And there are other things. “Do you have a phone?”

  Gwen appears surprised. “I thought you would ask for a year of my life, or a cherished memory, or my voice.”

  What would I do with any of that? “Would you prefer to give me a year of your life?”

  “I guess not.” Gwen reaches into her pocket and pulls out her phone, along with a plug-in charger she detaches from a key chain. “There’s no reception here.”

  “When you and Hyacinthe get to safety, let me know,” I say, taking it. The metal-and-glass object is light in my hand. I haven’t held one in a long time.

  “I was going to call my boyfriend,” she tells me. “Once, he picked up, and I could hear their music in the background. If he calls—”

  “I’ll tell him to get out,” I say. “Now hide, and when they come in, you leave.”

  Hyacinthe gives me a speaking look as he guides the mortal toward the darkness.

  It is the merrow that takes my hand. “Lady of the land,” he says, voice even raspier than mine, skin chilly. “The only gift I have to give you is knowledge. There is a war coming in the waves. The Queen of the Undersea has grown weak, and her child is weaker. When there comes blood in the water, the land would be well served to stay away. Cirien-Cròin is coming.”

  Then he lurches toward the water barrel.

  And at his warning, I walk to the copper-banded door and turn the knob. I still feel wobbly and breathless, as though I have cast off a long fever. No breaking of a curse ever felt like this before, and it frightens me.

  But the bauchan and the rose-haired knight on the other side scare me even more. At the sight of me, she reaches for her sword, which I note she retrieved. I hope that means that Jack of the Lakes dropped it and not that he was caught.

  “How did you—” the bauchan begins.

  I cut them off with the firmest voice I can summon. “The cursed soldier—the prince’s prisoner—he’s not in his cell!” Which is true enough, since I let him out.

  “That doesn’t explain what you’re doing where you’re not supposed to be,” the rose-haired knight says.

  “When I came, there was no one guarding the entrance,” I say, letting that accusation hang in the air.

  The rose-haired knight strides past me impatiently, a blush coloring her cheeks. She stalks to the end of the prison where Hyacinthe ought to be. I follow, carefully keeping my gaze from the shadows.

  “Well?” I say, hand on my hip.

  The panic in their eyes tells me that Queen Annet has earned her reputation for brutality honestly.

  “The girl,” the rose-haired knight says, realizing the human is gone, too.

  “And the spy from the Undersea.” The bauchan speaks a word to open the merrow’s cell, then walks around it. Letting all the prisoners out has confused their suppositions about what happened, at least.

  “You saw nothing?” the rose-haired knight asks.

  “What was there to see?” I return. “What did you see, to leave your post?”

  The bauchan gives the knight a look, seeming to will her to silence. Neither of them speaks for a long moment. Finally, the knight says, “Tell no one of this. We will catch the prisoners. They must never make it out of the Court of Moths.”

  I nod slowly, as though I am considering her words. I lift my chin as I have seen the Gentry do, as Lady Nore did. No one would have believed the part I am playing were I in my rags, with my wild hair, but I see the guards believe me now. Perhaps I could come to like this dress for more than its beauty.

  “I must rejoin the prince,” I say. “I will keep this from him as long as I can, but if you don’t find Hyacinthe before we depart for the Thistlewitch at dawn, there will be no hiding that he’s gone.”

  Heart thundering, I walk out into the hall. Then I retrace my steps to the revel, pressing my hands to my chest to still their trembling.

  I head to a table and pour myself a long draught of green wine. It smells like crushed grass and goes straight to my head, drowning out the sour taste of adrenaline.

  I spot Oak, a wine bottle in one hand and the cat-headed lady I saw before in his arms. She reaches up to pet his golden curls with her claws as they dance. Then there is a change of partners, and a crone moves into the cat lady’s place.

  The prince takes her withered hand and kisses it. When she leans in to kiss his throat, he only laughs. Then sweeps her away into the steps of the gavotte, his inebriated smile never dipping or faltering.

  Until the ogre dancing with the cat-headed lady abruptly pulls her out of the spinning circle. He pushes her roughly through the throng toward a second ogre.

  Oak stops dancing, leaving his partner as he strides across the floor to them.

  I follow more slowly, unable to make the crowd part for me as he did.

  By the time I get anywhere close, the cat-headed lady is standing behind Oak, hissing like a snake.

  “Give her over,” says one of the ogres. “She’s a little thief, and I’ll have it out of her hide.”

  “A thief? Purloining hearts, perhaps,” says Oak, making the cat lady smile. She wears a gown of the palest pink silk with panniers on either side and earrings of crystals hanging from her furred ears. She looks too wealthy to need to steal anything.

  “You think because you’ve got that good royal blood in you, you’re better than us,” says the ogre, pressing one long fingernail against the prince’s shoulder. “Maybe you are. Only way to be sure is to have a taste.”

  There’s a drunken wobble to Oak’s movements as he pushes off the ogre’s hand and obvious contempt in his voice. “The difference in flavor would be too subtle for your palate.”

  The cat-headed lady presses a handkerchief to her mouth and steps delicately away, not sticking around to witness the consequences of Oak’s gallant defense of her.

  “I doubt it will be much trouble to bleed you and find out,” one ogre says, causing the other to laugh and close in. “Shall we put it to a test?”

  At that, the prince edges back a little, but the second ogre is directly behind him. “That would be a mistake.”

  The last thing Oak ought to do is show them he’s afraid. The scent of weakness is headier than blood.

  Unless he wants to be hit.

  Should he be drawn into a fight, he would violate guest etiquette. But if one of the ogres struck first—then it would be the host who had made the misstep. Judging by the size of the ogres, though, a single blow might knock the prince’s head off his shoulders.

  Not only are they large, but they look trained for violence. Oak wasn’t even able to block my hand when I scratched his face.

  I must have made some impulsive, jerky movement, because the prince’s gaze goes to me. One of the ogres turns in my direction and chuckles.

  “Well, well,” he says. “She looks delicious. Is she yours? Since you defended a thief, perhaps we ought to show you what it feels like to be stolen from.”

  Oak’s voice hardens. “You’re witless enough not to know the difference between eating a rock and a sweetmeat until your teeth crack, but know this—she is not to be touched.”

  “What did you say?” asks his companion with a grunt.

  Oak’s eyebrows go up. “Banter isn’t your strong suit, is it? I was attempting to indicate that your friend here was a fool, a muttonhead, a clodpate, an asshat, an oaf—”

  The ogre punches him, massive fist connecting with Oak’s cheekbone hard enough to make him stagger. The ogre hits him again, blood spattering from his mouth.

  An odd gleam comes into the prince’s eye.

  Another blow lands.

  Why doesn’t he hit back? Even if Oak wanted them to strike first, they’ve done it. He would be well within his rights to fight. “Queen Annet will punish you for attacking the Crown Prince!” I shout, hoping the ogre will come to his senses before Oak gets hurt worse.

  At my words, the other ogre clamps down on his friend’s shoulder, restraining him from a third blow. “The boy’s had enough.”

  “Have I?” Oak asks, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His smile grows, showing red teeth.

  I turn to him in utter disbelief.

  Oak stands up straighter, ignoring the bruise blooming beneath one eye, pushing away the hair hanging in his face. He looks a little dazed.

  “Hit me again,” the prince says, daring them.

  The two ogres share a look. The companion seems nervous. The other makes a fist.

  “Come on.” Oak’s smile does not seem to belong to him. It’s not the one he turned on the dancers. Not the one he turned on me. It’s full of menace, his eyes shining like a blade. “Hit me.”

  “Stop it!” I scream, so loud that several more people turn toward me. “Stop!”

  Oak appears chagrined, as though he were the only one I was yelling at. “Your pardon,” he says.

  They allow him to stumble over to me. Whether he’s punch-drunk or just plain drunk, I cannot tell.

  “You’re hurt,” I say, foolishly.

  “I lost you in the crowd,” Oak says. There’s a bruise purpling at the corner of his mouth, and a few specks of blood mixed with his freckles.

  The same mouth that I kissed.

  I nod, too stunned to do more. My heart is still racing.

  “Shall we put our dance practice to some purpose?” he asks.

  “Dance?” I ask, my voice coming out a little high.

  His gaze goes to the circles of leaping and cavorting Folk. I wonder if he is in shock.

  I have just come from betraying him. I feel rather shocked myself.

  I put my hand in his as if mesmerized. There is only the warmth of his fingers against my chilly skin. His amber fox eyes, pupils wide and dark. His teeth catch his lip, as though he’s nervous. I reach up and touch his cheek. Blood and freckles.

  He’s shaking a little. I guess if I’d done what he did, I’d still be shaking, too.

  “Your Highness,” comes a voice.

  I drop his hand. The rose-haired knight has pushed her way through the crowd, three more heavily armored soldiers behind her. Their expressions are grim.

  My stomach drops.

  The knight bows. “Your Highness, I am Revindra, part of Queen Annet’s guard. And I bring news that your—that one of your companions broke into our prison and released Lady Nore’s spy as well as one of Queen Annet’s mortals and a merrow from the Undersea.”

  I say nothing. There’s nothing for me to say.

  “What evidence do you have?” Oak asks with a quick glance in my direction.

  “A confession from a kelpie that he gave her aid. She paid him with this.” Revindra opens her palm to show the silver fox with the peridot eyes.

  His jaw tightens. “Wren?”

  I don’t know how to answer for what I did.

  Oak takes the playing piece, an abstracted expression coming over his face. “I thought never to see this again.”

  “We’re here to take Suren,” Revindra goes on. “And we will take it ill if you attempt to prevent us.”

  The gaze that Oak slants toward me is as cold as the one he bestowed on the ogres.

  “Oh,” he says. “I wouldn’t dream of stopping you.”

  At fourteen, I learned to make tea out of crushed spruce needles along with bee balm flowers, boiled over a fire.

  “Would you like a cup, Mr. Fox?” I asked my stuffed animal solicitously, as though we were very fancy.

  He didn’t want any. Since stealing Mr. Fox back from my unparents’ boxes, I’d cuddled up with him every night, and his fur had become dingy from sleeping on moss and dirt.

  Worse, there were a few times I’d left him behind when I went to sit underneath windows at Bex’s school or the local community college, repeating probably useless poems and snatches of history to myself, or doing sums by tracing the numbers in the earth. One night when I returned, I found he’d been attacked by a squirrel looking for material to nest in and most of his insides had been pulled out.

  Since then, I’d stayed at my camp, reading him a novel about an impoverished governess I’d taken from the library when I’d picked up Foraging in the American Southeast. There was a lot about convalescing and chilblains, so I figured it might make him feel better.

  Mr. Fox looked uncomfortably like the skins Bogdana hung up to dry after her kills.

  “We’ll get you some new guts, Mr. Fox,” I promised him. “Feathers, maybe.”

  As I flopped down, my gaze tracked a bird in the tree above us. I’d gotten fast and vicious in the wild. I could catch it easily enough, but it would be hard to be sure the feathers were clean and parasite-free. Maybe I should consider ripping apart one of my unfamily’s pillows instead.

  Out in the woods, I’d often think of the games Rebecca and I used to play. Like once, when we were pretending to be fairy-tale princesses. We carted out props—a rusty axe that had probably never been taken from the garage before, two paper crowns I’d made from glitter and cut-up newspaper, and an apple, only slightly bruised, but shiny with wax.

  “First, I am going to be a woodsman and you are going to plead for your life,” Rebecca told me. “I’ll be sympathetic, because you’re so pretty and sad, so I’ll kill a deer instead.”

  So we played that out, and Rebecca hacked at weeds with the axe.

  “Now I’ll be the evil queen,” I’d volunteered. “And you can pretend to give me—”

  “I’m the evil queen,” Rebecca insisted. “And the prince. And the woodsman.”

  “That’s not fair,” I whined. Rebecca could be so bossy sometimes. “You get to do everything, and all I get to do is cry and sleep.”

  “You get to eat the apple,” Rebecca pointed out. “And wear a crown. Besides, you said that you wanted to be the princess. That’s what princesses do.”

  Bite the bad apple. Sleep.

  Cry.

  A rustling sound made my head come up.

  “Suren?” a shout came through the woods. No one should have been calling me. No one should have even known my name.

  “Stay here, Mr. Fox,” I said, tucking him into my dwelling. Then I crept toward the voice.

  Only to see Oak, the heir to Elfhame, standing in a clearing. All my memories of him were of a merry young boy. But he’d become tall and rawboned, in the manner of children who have grown suddenly, and too fast. When he moved, it was with coltish uncertainty, as though not used to his body. He would be thirteen. And he had no reason to be in my woods.

  I crouched in a patch of ferns. “What do you want?”

  He turned toward my voice. “Suren?” he called again. “Is that you?”

  Oak wore a blue vest with silver frogging in place of buttons. Beneath was a fine linen shirt. His hooves had silver caps that matched two silver hoops at the very top of one pointed ear. Butter-blond hair threaded with dark gold blew around his face.

  I glanced down at myself. My feet were bare and dark with filth. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I washed my dress. A bloodstain marred the cloth near my waist, from where I’d snagged my arm on a thorn. Grass stains on the skirt, near my knees. I recalled him finding me staked to a post, tied like an animal outside the camp of the Court of Teeth. I could not bear more of his pity.

  “It’s me,” I called. “Now go away.”

  “But I’ve only just found you. And I want to talk.” He sounded as though he meant it. As though he considered us friends, even after all this time.